In a blog post, Heaney accepted that the harshest measures have been removed, for example the ability for politicians to block websites at will, and measures allowing the Government to amend the law at any time. However, he highlighted the fact that the bill was passed under considerable influence from the record and film industries and that only five per cent of MPs bothered to turn up to debate the bill in Parliament.

In the meantime, TalkTalk says that it will continue to stand by its pledge to its customers.

“Unless we are served with a court order we will never surrender a customer’s details to rightsholders. We are the only major ISP to have taken this stance and we will maintain it,” reiterated Heaney. “If we are instructed to disconnect an account due to alleged copyright infringement we will refuse to do so and tell the rightsholders we’ll see them in court.”